Salespeople usually close on winning new customers. This guide will help your salespeople look at your current customers differently.

The Risks of Short-Term “Hunter” Thinking In Sales 

By tradition, most if not all salespeople see themselves as hunters. This mentality is often captured in the phrase “eat what you kill.” In some environments, like 100% commission-based roles, no new sales mean no income for the salesperson. Indeed, landing new customers is crucially important. Without a steady stream of new customers joining the organization, your company’s growth will stall and eventually stop.

The dark side of this focus on new customers means that existing customers sometimes become a secondary priority for salespeople. As a result, there are fewer opportunities to lift customer satisfaction, earn referrals and grow the bottom line with upselling. It’s not just missed opportunities that sales organizations need to be concerned about.

Put yourself in the shoes of a salesperson whose career progression and income are measured mainly on new sales. Given a choice between prospecting for a new opportunity and checking in on the customer you closed last quarter, prospecting will win every time. Over time, it’s no surprise that some salespeople focus on short-term wins rather than strategies that maximize long-term customer satisfaction.

Growing Accounts After Customers Sign On The Dotted Line

Salespeople can grow revenue by making time for their customers. First, your organization’s sales compensation plan focuses on net new sales. Second, salespeople spend the majority of their time working on new deals. These strategies are designed to be executed 2-4 hours per week.

Strategy 1. Create A Post-Purchase Sales Communication Plan

Nearly all professional salespeople have digital calendars and customer relationship management (CRM) tools at their fingertips. Use these tools to support your post-purchase sales communication. 

Suppose your typical customer relationship lasts for twenty-four months at an enterprise software company. In that case, use the following schedule to stay in touch with your buyer.

• 15 Days After Purchase: Check in to confirm the customer has received the product and see if they have any questions.
• 30 Days After Purchase: Get in touch with the customer to invite them to a free customer webinar where they can get answers to questions.
• 90 Days After Purchase: Ask the customer to share feedback about the product (i.e., what features do you like the most and what do you wish we had?)
• 6 Months After Purchase: Get in touch with the customer and ask them to write an honest, positive review of your company on G2.com or Capterra
• 12 Months After Purchase: Send the customer a card or gift to recognize their first customer anniversary.
• 15 Months After Purchase: Get in touch with the customer to offer a renewal promotion (i.e., get 15% off your annual plan if you renew for 12 months).

The key to successfully executing this strategy is consistency and leveraging reminders. Therefore, set aside 20 minutes after closing a new sale to add these reminders to your preferred tool.

Strategy 2. Request Introductions

People tend to know people like themselves. Accountants know other accountants, marketers know advertising people, and so forth. You can use this rule of thumb to your advantage by thoughtfully asking for referrals.

The way you execute this strategy depends on your company’s business model. In B2B sales, look for departments regularly interacting with your current customer. 

For instance, let’s say you have sold a sales software tool to a Fortune 500 business based in California. That business likely has multiple sales units across the country and internationally. In this case, you might phrase your request like this “Do you know Jane Smith, sales director of  the Northeast Sales division? If so, can I ask you to send a short introduction email on my behalf – I have a draft message you can copy and paste.”

With business-to-consumer sales, your objective is to seek introductions to people with similar needs. For example, a real estate salesperson might focus on serving urban professionals between the ages of 30 to 40. Your past customer probably has a few friends who might be looking for a home. 

Strategy 3. Reach Out With Value

The first two strategies were aimed at producing value for the salesperson. Only contacting your customer with requests may not be wise. You don’t want customers to see you as someone who makes demands! This strategy comes into play.

With this strategy, your goal is to simply remind the customer of your existence and that you care about them. The way you implement this strategy will depend on your natural strengths. Some people love remembering occasions like birthdays by sending gifts. Others enjoy sharing links to informative articles or books.

The marketing assets produced by your company may be helpful here. However, there is a caveat – personalization is king! If your company has produced a 20-page ebook and you think it would be relevant to Edward, do the work for your customer in your outreach message. For example: point out that chapter 2 (pages 7-10) have tips on automating compliance – a concern that Edward mentioned in your last call.

Regarding frequency, it is best to use this strategy every 2-3 months with your top customers. If that feels overwhelming, identify your ten most valuable customers and implement this strategy for them.

Strategy 4. Follow Up On Customer Complaints and Requests

The fourth strategy is reactive, so we are covering it last. We live in an imperfect world: it’s likely that your customers are going to want something new or have a problem to solve. Today, a customer might contact you with concerns about a delayed shipment. Next week, a customer might contact you to ask for something new (e.g., we’re opening an office in Mexico – does your software come in Spanish?)

When problems arise, you may not have the skills or time to solve the problem for the customer personally. That said, nobody likes to feel shifted from department to department to get a problem solved. The solution is simple – take note of the customer’s problem and refer it to the appropriate department. 

The next step is where you have the opportunity to shine as a salesperson. Keep following up internally and with the customer to verify that the problem has been solved. Acting as an advocate for your customer internally is not only the right thing to do, but it makes them more likely to take your call in the future.

No Capacity For Sales Followup?

The above strategies are best seen as ways to deepen customer relationships and increase customer lifetime value. Focusing your efforts on these strategies is often worthwhile, but they have drawbacks. Growing existing customer relationships is a long-term play – it could take months or even years to pay off. 

If your company needs to produce results faster, bringing new sales talent to the organization is your best bet. Contact Peak Sales Recruiting today to grow your sales team. Whether you need account executives, sales development representatives, or other sales talent, we can help.

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Recruiting top-tier sales talent with Peak Sales Recruiting is a powerful way to grow your sales force. Once you have excellent sales talent on your team, it’s important to coach and support them to hit their goals. One meaningful way to support salespeople is to find high-quality sales leads. Conferences are one of the best ways to help new sales hires find incredible leads.

Why Conferences and Events Are Great For Lead Generation 

Attending events as a salesperson is worthwhile for a few reasons. First, conference attendances are actively open to meeting new people and learning new ideas. That’s a great mindset for a salesperson looking to make connections. Second, conferences offer informal opportunities like dining, drinks, and more that make it easy to connect. Together, these two factors mean it is far easier to make high-value connections in just a few days.

Fortunately, business conferences are coming back in a big way. Deloitte expects that 2022 business travel spending will be about 55% of 2019 levels by the end of the year. With that trend in mind, there are specific strategies you can use to take advantage of the rebound in conferences as a salesperson. 

Know Your Conference Options

There are three primary strategies for using conferences to get leads. Each strategy has a different effort and reward ratio. 

• Your Company’s Conference

Various businesses organize conferences for their customers like Oracle, IBM, and Salesforce regularly. When you use the specific steps outlined below, these events offer outstanding lead generation potential. Participating in your company’s events offers the best return on your effort. If you can only use one strategy from this guide, focus on this one. 

• Industry Conferences

The strategies below will help you maximize this opportunity. Overall, industry conferences offer a moderate return on effort.

• Conferences As Industry Research

As a sales professional, it is valuable to understand your prospects’ needs, fears, and jargon. Without this knowledge, your cold calls and other outreach efforts are less likely to be relevant. Reviewing conferences as a source of industry trends can be helpful. It is best to see this conference strategy as secondary – it does not generate leads, but it does help you to understand your leads more effectively.

Make The Most of Your Company’s Conference 

Many companies like Apple, Adobe, Microsoft, and Salesforce organize their conferences. These are great opportunities to deepen existing customer relationships. To get the most out of this event, use the following tips:

• Get the conference attendee list.

Reach out to your marketing department or the event organizers to get the list one or two weeks before the event. As you review the list, highlight any current customers and people you have interacted with in the past year. 

• Set up in-person meetings in advance.

Using the list from the previous step, reach out to people you already know and set up meetings with as many people as possible. Make it your goal to request referrals and introductions from as many people as possible in your meetings.

• Look for “land and expand” opportunities.

This tip applies mainly to B2B sales situations where you may start your relationship with one department of a large company. For example, let’s say that you are working with one brand of Proctor & Gamble. At the conference, aim to deepen the relationship with your current customer and meet with other people at the same company.

• Seek out centers of influence.

Conferences usually feature keynote speakers, panels, and other experts sharing their perspectives with attendees. As a salesperson, these experts may not be able or interested in buying from you. Despite that fact, don’t ignore these expert participants. Instead, aim to build a relationship with them by asking questions, buying their books, and following them online. In the medium to long term, experts have the potential to help you meet many leads. 

• Schedule post-conference actions

Attending a multi-day conference, especially if travel is involved, tends to be a tiring experience. It’s best to plan and block 2-3 hours on your calendar for post-conference follow-up activities the day after the conference. That means sending emails, making calls, and connecting on social media. 

The biggest mistake in attending conferences is looking at the event in isolation. Making the most of a conference is a three-part process: pre-conference preparation, working the conference, and post-conference activities. Simply showing up at the conference and hoping for leads to fall on your lap is a mistake. 

Getting Leads From Industry Conferences 

Gaining leads from industry events, trade shows, and conventions is more challenging than using your organization’s events for a reason. To some degree, people attending your company’s event already know and trust your brand. In comparison, attendees at a general audience industry event may not have heard of your company.

The good news is that you can put the odds of success in your favor by applying a disciplined process. Use the steps outlined in the previous section, especially pre-event and post-event activities, to find people to meet and schedule interactions during and after the event. 

Let’s say that you have the capacity and funding to attend up to two events in the next twelve months. With that constraint in mind, use these tips to filter for high potential events for lead generation.

• Ask current customers what events they are attending.

The people who are currently buying from you can give you the best insight about which events to attend. Contact 5-10 customers and ask which business events they’ve attended and why they found them valuable. Pay close attention to any event that gets mentioned multiple times.

• What other purchases do your buyers usually make?

Put yourself in your buyer’s shoes – what do they purchase after buying from you? For example, a new home buyer is highly likely to buy more furniture. A startup company that works with a lawyer to set up its corporate structure will also need to buy accounting services. Use these insights to find more business events.

• Use Google to find more local options 

Some salespeople struggle to attend events because they cannot get approval for plane tickets and other expenses for far-away conferences. There are two workarounds for this constraint. Start by using Google to find events within driving distance. 

For example, let’s say that you are looking to meet chief financial officers and you live in Chicago. Use these searches to locate additional conference possibilities:

• Accounting conference Chicago

• Accounting event Chicago

• CFO conference Chicago

Use these search ideas as a starting point to identify potential local events. In addition, look for top events that have hybrid and virtual tickets so you can attend from home or the office.

Conferences As Industry Research

From a lead generation standpoint, it’s tough to beat attending a conference in person. Virtual attendance is a great alternative option. If you cannot attend a conference this year, you can still benefit from using conferences as a research tool.

To continue the example from the previous section, let’s assume you have a list of three events where CFOs – your ideal buyer – are attending. You can still gain lead generation insights by reading conference websites for inspiration. These websites will give you clues about the trends, worries, and opportunities facing your market.

Choose Your Lead Generation Strategies And Execute

Conference based lead generation is a powerful way to augment your sales team’s effectiveness. If your employees are well supplied with leads, they may need sales coaching support. Use our guide to sales coaching techniques to lead your sales team to a higher level of success.

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The vice president of sales is a key player in any organization — although in some industries you’ll find more than one per company. Charged with meeting the revenue goals, hiring, organizing and overseeing the sales force, the required skill set is both extensive and unusual. Sales VPs typically come up through the ranks of sales, but most talented salespeople will not make effective VPs. 

Great salespeople are hunters. Great VPs are hunters who’ve learned how to organize and lead hunting parties. 

How much a VP/Sales gets paid is influenced by factors that include: 

• Track record
• Years of experience
• Size of employer
• Years of tenure at an employer
• Employer’s industry
• Industry knowledge and connections
• Method of compensation
• Location

Compensation Type

This plays out in how VP/Sales are paid. There’s typically a substantial base salary garnished with varying amounts of bonus money depending on the company and the industry. For example, an “average” VP/Sales in the financial industry is not unique in their organization; there may be dozens of VP/Sales in a large firm. 

For software companies or manufacturers, there may be just a few — or only one. As a result, total VP/Sales compensation (OTE, On-Target-Earnings) in some industries is lower than you might expect. 

There are also many types of additional compensation. Startups or tech companies may offer a mix of bonus cash and stock for reaching or exceeding goals. Others may stick with straight commission sharing. 

Location

In addition to its industry, where a company is located and its geographic footprint are major determinants of total income for their VP/Sales. A regional business in the Midwest is not going to pay what a global business pays. Large national/multinational companies tend to pay in the same ranges as others in their industry because they are competing for the same talent. 

Average Pay

According to research from Glassdoor, the average base pay for a VP/Sales is $100,000 across all industries and all experience levels. When you factor in the size of the company and years of experience as a VP/Sales, large differences in compensation emerge. For our analysis, we looked at average pay in four scenarios: 

• Low — less than one year experience at a small company with fewer than 50 employees total
• High — average salary for VP/Sales with 15 years experience at large companies (1,000 or more employees)
• Highest — Highest average salaries for AEs with 15 years experience at large companies
• High total comp — Total compensation for highest earners when OTE was included

Averages can be deceiving of course: There are VP/Sales making less than $100,000 and some making ten times that amount when total compensation is included. 

• Average: $100,000
• Low: $66,000
• High: $268,000
• Total Comp: $288,000

There’s significant variation between industries, too. In some, additional compensation is modest, keeping total comp down, while other industries have almost unlimited potential. 

BioTech & Pharma

The biotech and pharmaceutical world was rocked by the arrival of COVID-19 and the reverberations continue. While the direct impact was felt most acutely by the firms engaged in combating covid, the increased demand for healthcare supplies of all kinds affected many others. Rapid change will be a major factor going forward, as mass therapies (blockbuster drugs) give way to highly tailored individualized treatments. This will allow Pharma sales executives to stay on top of a fast-moving marketplace: 

Bio-sensors, big data and IOT will accelerate the changes. 

• Average: $190,000
• Low: $82,000
• High: $221,000
• Total comp: $365,000

Business Services

The covid pandemic poured fuel on an already hot marketplace as digitalization of business processes and new digital services were transforming the business landscape. With an annual growth rate north of 10%, the demand for more business services — especially digital tools — shows no sign of slowing. The spread between the lowest and highest earners reflects the growth and importance of digital services.

• Average: $142,000
• Low: $64,000
• High: $296,000
• Total comp: $547,000

Consumer Services

Some of the major drivers of consumer services were walloped by restrictions and anxieties around coronavirus: travel, hospitality and recreation all took huge hits. As the pandemic eases, money will likely surge back into these sectors, producing some good years until the pent-up demand is satisfied. The amount of services spending in the overall economy is reflected in relatively higher pay for VP/Sales positions in the industry.  

• Average: $172,000
• Low: $113,000
• High: $249,000
• Total comp: $391,000

Health

An ageing population plus more available treatments and increasing diversity of delivery points should continue to foster a steady rise in health spending in the years ahead. Consolidation among traditional healthcare companies such as hospitals and medical practices is somewhat offset by the proliferation of “health adjacent” settings offering services such as administration of cosmetic treatments and dietary/lifestyle coaching. 

• Average: $168,000
• Low: $97,000
• High: $182,000
• Total comp: $327,000

Tech: Hardware & Software

It’s not surprising that there’s a lot of compensation available in computer hardware and software sales. From established “blue chip” leaders like HP, Dell and Apple to startups making the IoT happen, digitalization is well established and shows no sign of slowing. The application of AI across the entire spectrum of our business and personal lives is already underway and will only accelerate in the years ahead, creating even more opportunities for sales leaders who can crush goals. 

• Average: $188,000
• Low: $102,000
• High: $222,000
• Total comp: $548,000

Tech: Services

Cloud-based software has conditioned the market to renting rather than buying, which promises to further boost spending on tech services, which has been clipping along at a growth rate of about 11%. New modalities — SaaS, blockchain, AI — have appeared and are setting off another major wave of digitization. As with their compatriots in the hardware/software sector, sales execs on the services side are paid very well. The numbers skew a bit lower, possibly because many companies in this sector are startups, which tend to pay a bit less but also offer big upsides through stock options.  

• Average: $194,000
• Low: $88,000
• High: $359,000
• Total comp: $516,000

Financial Services

Looking at the profits of big financial institutions and the pay scales for VP/Sales might raise the question of who’s getting all that money. Part of the answer is that some players, especially banks, have multiple VP/Sales, literally spreading the wealth among a larger number of executives. Financial services has been doing very well, but there are some questions about the future: Blockchain technology will be implemented throughout the industry, possibly reducing regulatory burdens and making more services more widely available. However, the counter trend is that cryptocurrencies may lead to significant assets moving out of traditional financial services companies. 

• Average: $135,000
• Low: $57,000
• High: $230,000
• Total comp: $391,000

Manufacturing

Companies with “digital maturity,” ones that have already adopted and implemented digital processes throughout their organizations, have done better over the past few years than their peers who are less mature. Labor shortages and supply chain issues continue to roil the industry, and over-reliance on low-inventory models has damaged companies who rely on a steady stream of shipments from their factories. 

Manufacturers who can bring production closer to home markets while maintaining margins stand the best chance of prospering. For VP/Sales, a company’s capacity to deliver will continue to be a key determinant of marketplace success. 

• Average: $185,000
• Low: $88,000
• High: $220,000
• Total comp: $353,00

Telecommunications

Change is a constant in the telecom world and the coming decade will be no exception as 5G rolls out across the world. Intense competition is the norm and that won’t lessen anytime soon as wire-based telecom solutions compete with fiber optic, cellular and even satellite providers. The global appetite for moving data is enormous and growing. The Iot alone promises to add trillions of bits to the packets moved by telecom providers, so the future is bright. For VP/Sales in this arena, the fights will be long and hard, but the rewards could be massive. 

• Average: $185,000
• Low: $126,000
• High: $208,000
• Total comp: $351,000

Read more of our Insights and get tools to help flourish your sales career.

Elite athletes, even the best of the best, invest constant time and resources into training. Famously, Michael Jordan spent time drilling fundamental skills even as he achieved win after win. To sustain high-performance levels, salespeople need to find consistent training opportunities.

Why Traditional Sales Training Isn’t Enough

Reading classic sales books and taking courses is a fantastic way to get started for a new salesperson. Some companies go beyond these steps and invite external experts to run occasional workshops. These resources can help.

Off-the-shelf external sales training resources are rarely a perfect fit for your specific needs. Sure, with the right amount of effort and reflection, your sales staff may be able to draw lessons from general-purpose sales training. However, asking busy professionals to participate in training and then connect the dots about how it might be helpful to their work is asking a great deal. 

One solution to that challenge is to pay an expert sales consultant to provide coaching and training. When you find the right expert, this approach is often an excellent way to inspire your team and quickly increase their results. The downside is that sales consultants know their value and charge high prices.

When you need to boost the skills of your sales team, consider looking inside your team for insights. Running a virtual lunch & learn session to train your salespeople is a powerful way to identify and spread best practices.

5 Reasons To Start Offering

Virtual Lunch & Learn Sales Trainings:

You might not immediately see the value if you’ve never offered a virtual lunch and learn session to train your sales team. There are five reasons why running these sessions is worth your time and effort.

1. Built-In Credibility

When a successful salesperson on your team runs a training session, the person has instant credibility. As a result, it is easy to minimize the typical doubts and skepticism that reduce training effectiveness.

2. Focused “Just In Time” Format

A virtual lunch and learn session is intended to be short and focused. We recommend keeping your session to a maximum of fifty minutes. This allows your staff to take a break before diving into afternoon meetings.

3. Building A Custom Sales Training Library

By recording your virtual lunch and learn session, you can gradually build up a library of training sessions. Over the course of a year, you can build up a sizeable body of knowledge. That resource will become a resource that you can use to onboard future hires and support ongoing coaching.

4. Increase Teamwork

A virtual lunch and learn does not need to be designed or presented by a single person. In many cases, having two or three presenters is ideal because it adds a variety of perspectives to the topic. For example, you might have two high-performing sales representatives in different offices who haven’t worked together. Giving them the chance to work together on the presentation means each person will have a more robust internal network.

5. Strengthen Remote Employee Engagement

More and more sales jobs are fully or partially remote. To promote engagement, give your remote staff the chance to participate in, and create virtual training.

Including remote employees in training projects is just one way you can help them to succeed. See our post on How to Succeed as a Remote Salesperson for ten powerful ways to hit your goals in today’s work anywhere environment.

Planning A Virtual Lunch & Learn Session

Now that you know why these virtual training sessions are valuable let’s break down how to plan your first session.

1. Choose Your Sales Topic Wisely

Selecting the right topic is critical to making the session valuable. There are three types of topics that tend to work well in this format: emerging sales trends, current challenges, or success stories. 

For example, you might have an SDR (Sales Development Representative) achieving incredible results with cold email or video messages. Asking that person to deliver training based on their achievement is brilliant. Alternatively, you might ask your top account manager to share tips on the strategies to boost customer retention.

Before settling on a topic, ask yourself, “Can these ideas, tactics, and strategies be applied this week?” If the answer is no, look for another topic.

2. Call For Volunteers

Ask for volunteers to come forward to lead the training. If there is limited interest, invite your team to suggest different topics. If your sales team is overwhelmed right now, accept that feedback and make a note to revisit training in a few weeks. 

3. Schedule Your Session

Avoid scheduling the training session close to standard sales deadlines like quarter-end or year-end. If you have sales teams in several time zones, you may need to plan several sessions at different times to cover everyone.

4. Create The Presentation

The next step is to create the training presentation. Encourage your presenters to include exercises. For example, roleplaying a sales call for a few minutes might be helpful if the presentation relates to objection handling.

5. Record The Presentation (optional)

Once the presentation is ready, use a video conference app like Zoom that supports call recordings. You can share the recording using Google Drive, SharePoint, or other secure file-sharing services.

If your presenters are uncomfortable with recording the session, don’t insist on it. It’s more important to ensure quality participation. 

6. Collect Feedback

After delivering the lunch and learn presentation, gather feedback from attendees on what they liked. In addition to asking what they liked about the session, invite suggestions for future sessions. 

7. Add The Training To Your Library (optional)

After the sales lunch & learn session is completed, upload it to your training library. You can certainly leverage a learning management system (LMS) if you have a learning management system. Smaller companies can use a more straightforward solution like uploading the video recordings to a service like Dropbox.

Want Even Faster Sales Results?

Upskilling your sales team through training is worthwhile, but it has a downside. It can take weeks or months to create a new training program. Creating an internal sales training program also assumes you already have a few high-performing sales professionals to leverage. 

If you are rebuilding or expanding your sales force to new territories, it might not be the right time to focus on training. Peak has a track record of finding and recruiting successful salespeople. Contact us today to discuss your sales needs.

Looking for a topic for your first sales training session? Considering starting with the Challenger Sales Model. You can learn more here. 

Sales is a high-pressure business where you are constantly being evaluated based on your results. 

Navigating the highs and lows of sales work takes a variety of techniques. 

Sometimes, a word of encouragement from a colleague or manager can help. In other cases, taking a short break to walk outside might be all you need to boost your motivation. 

At other times, however, these techniques may not be enough. More structured feedback is needed to get your sales game back on track.

The Sales Coaching Essentials Toolbox

These sales coaching techniques are fundamentals that every salesperson can use to boost their results. They are intentionally focused on core disciplines and habits that work. While you can use these techniques to self-coach, they tend to work more effectively when discussing these ideas with a peer or a manager.

1. The Two-Step Recovery By The Numbers 

Reviewing the numbers is one of the best ways to help your sales reps get back. In particular, this technique is ideal if you suspect weakening performance is linked to insufficient activity. Solving low sales activity gets easier when you use this technique.

The first step of the technique is to gather your sales activity numbers over a recent period. Ideally, choose a sales activity entirely within your control (e.g., number of prospects contacted). For instance, check how many prospects you have contacted in the last 30 days.

The second step of the technique is to ask whether your level of sales activity is high enough to meet your goals. You might have determined that it takes 100 calls to relevant prospects to set 5 sales meetings in the past. If you want to have five sales meetings per week, you need to make at least 100 calls per week.

Utilize this process with each key point in your sales process. If you are hitting call number targets but not booking 5 meetings per week, review your call script. Has anything changed? Are you skipping steps? Are you emphasizing different points? This holds true for client meetings and pitches as well. If your close rates fall off, review your process, record your pitches at various points and look for changes in your talking points. Have your manager or a colleague sit in to provide feedback. It is important to utilize data, tools and coaching to review, understand and improve performance throughout the sales process. 

This technique helps you identify a “North Star” to guide your sales work. If you constantly hit your North Star numbers week in and week out, you are guaranteed to make progress.

2. Navigating Rejection and Disappointment Effectively

The pain of rejection and disappointment is a constant threat to sales performance. Given that reality, it pays to think of healthy ways to manage these frustrations. Every person has a different personal playbook of tactics that work for them based on their specific personality.

Help discover ways that work by asking questions:

• Think back to the last time you had a proposal rejected by a client. How did you feel, and what did you do next?
• Imagine you suffer a significant disappointment at 10 am Monday, and you had another meeting with a different prospect at 11 am. What could you do to refocus and get ready for the next meeting?
• Did you learn something from the rejection that could help with the next prospect?
• Was there something that was within your control that you could have done differently and could help with your next opportunity?

The key is to mine the experience gained in rejection to help improve your process. It is equally important to have a “short memory” when necessary. If you did all that was necessary to win the business and the rejection was beyond your control, do not let disappointment sabotage your next opportunity.

3. Mine The CRM For Sales Opportunities

If you’ve been active in sales for more than six months, you probably have many opportunities in your CRM. Compared to speaking with prospects, plumbing the depths of a CRM system often feels unexciting. With the right approach, you can discover significant opportunities there.

Guiding yourself or a sales rep to gain more value from the CRM starts with asking a few questions. We’ll use Salesforce as an example here, but these principles and questions apply to nearly every CRM product.

• How do you feel about using Salesforce in your work?

The response you receive can indicate the best next step. If the person is negative about Salesforce, take a moment to acknowledge and understand those feelings before using the other questions. If the CRM is viewed negatively, more training is often required. The emphasis needs to be on the potential of the tool for the sales rep to create success rather than for management to identify weaknesses. If the person is neutral or positive about the CRM, move on to the next question.

• What do you find most valuable about CRM?

This question helps you refocus on what is most valuable in the CRM from the individuals’ perspective.

• If you had to book another sales meeting in the next five days, how would you use your CRM or inbox to do that?

This question helps the person to dive deeper. Ideally, you’re looking to hear responses like “I would search for prospects that I hadn’t interacted with in the past 30 or 60 days.” 

In practice, a reasonably well maintained CRM is full of sales opportunities. The prospect may have told you that last year was not a good time to discuss your offering because a new CFO paused new spending. After a few months pass, the situation might look very different. Also, reviewing your CRM may remind you to refocus on follow-up with prospects.

4. Narrow Your Sales Skill Focus

Success in sales requires a significant talent for prospecting, answering objections, presenting, engaging stakeholders, negotiating and closing. 

One solution is to focus your coaching to work on one specific skill at a time. You might have a rep who struggles to engage technical stakeholders. They can veto purchases if they are not satisfied. Engaging these stakeholders is crucial to keeping large deals moving forward. 

To apply this technique, guide your sales rep to improve their results by focusing on a single area at a time. By narrowing your focus, improvement will feel more manageable. After focusing on one skill for a few weeks or months, you can reassess the situation and choose where to focus your efforts next.

5. Inspire Excellence With Sales Stories

People typically respond well to relevant stories, whether in a selling situation or when coaching. A well-chosen sales story can help a prospect to identify with the subject and add credibility, or can help a sales rep understand the intent of coaching in a real world example. To apply this technique when coaching, use the following steps.

1) Take the time to understand what is truly holding a sales rep back

Understanding their specific situation is crucial. Listen carefully to understand both the facts and emotions at play. For instance, you might hear, “I get frustrated when prospects keep asking for more details even after attending several meetings.”

2) Seek out a similar sales story

Once you understand the situation, look for an example from your sales experience that might help. If possible, avoid choosing a sales story from a different context (i.e., an enterprise B2B software salesperson might not connect to a story involving direct to consumer sales).

3) Ask the person to draw their conclusions

Once you have a good sales story to share, share it with the person and ask them what they think. They might simply view the story as a source of inspiration or see some of the principles – either way, that is a win. 

What To Do When You Need More A-List Performers

Investing time and effort in sales coaching will produce higher results. However, sales coaching often takes months. What if you need to lift sales performance more quickly? In that case, recruitment is a crucial strategy. Peak Sales Recruiting has a proven track record of recruiting high performers in sales. 

Contact us today to find out how we can help you grow your sales team.

Looking for a unique sales strategy? Visit this link to learn about the Challenger Sales Model. 

The High Cost of Extended Sales Rep Onboarding

Taking months to bring a new employee up to speed in sales is costly in several ways. Consider the direct costs of sales rep onboarding. A new hire is drawing a salary (or advance on commissions) for a period of time before they start to close sales. For example, a sales rep earning a base salary of $70,000 might cost the company over $35,000 in compensation expenses if they take a full six months to get up to speed.

In addition to direct costs, there are indirect costs to onboarding. The new hire may need additional training and support from managers and other sales representatives. For companies that have minimal sales training resources, informal sales training and mentorship can be especially time-consuming.

Don’t get misunderstand us… It’s probably not possible to eliminate sales rep onboarding entirely. It takes time to learn a new product, different ways of selling and company culture. But what if you could shave a month or two from your onboarding process? That improvement alone could boost sales productivity dramatically, especially if you are hiring many sales staff.

Reducing Sales Rep Onboarding Time: 4 Factors To Optimize

The first step in improving your sales onboarding process is to analyze it and determine the root causes of slow onboarding. As a starting point, use the following 4-factor model.

1. Streamline Administrative Support

The reality is that new employees generally need more support in order to be successful. However, many of their support needs are predictable. For example, every new hire is going to need guidance in learning how to book time off, set up their benefits, and more. 

If you are planning to hire more than two sales representatives in the next 12 months, it is worth taking the time to optimize your support. At the very least, create a checklist of steps that each new hire should complete in their first 30 days. Ideally, a new hire’s basic technology setup – laptop, phone and accounts on key platforms – should be ready to go on their first day.

2. Emphasize Necessary Product Knowledge

You can’t sell a product without understanding how it works. In the first few weeks at the company, each new sales rep should have scheduled training to understand your key products. If possible, give them the opportunity to meet customers and see how they use your products. 

There is a significant opportunity to save onboarding time on product knowledge by focusing on the essentials. For example, make a list of the 50 most common customer questions that come up in presentations or demos. The list of the most common questions and objections can become a living document for the entire sales team.

3. Focus Your Sales Training

The time required for sales process onboarding varies considerably depending on experience level. Brand new sales development representatives (SDRs) and other new sales reps will likely require substantial sales training. In comparison, bringing in more experienced sales professional can significantly cut sales training costs.

By the way, there’s no need to rely exclusively on internally produced sales training materials. Sales training courses on LinkedIn Learning or Sales Gravy can save sales managers hours of time in creating presentations. The only caveat is that these online training course libraries tend to be vast – so create a short list of “must complete” courses during onboarding.

4. Identify Sales Quick Wins During Onboarding 

Most sales people are highly motivated to achieve goals. Therefore, asking a sales person to spend weeks or months on sales training, administrative tasks and other preparation can be demoralizing. To mitigate this onboarding problem, create opportunities for new sales hires to win.

Closing a new sale, especially in enterprise sales, is unlikely to happen right away. However, there are other wins to be had when you focus on the leading indicators of the sales process. For example, consider a sales process that emphasizes providing product demos. A leading indicator for success in this context would be booking appointments with prospects. Therefore, you may want to set an easily achievable activity goal (e.g. contact 10 prospects for demos in your first 30 days) to give prospects a chance to wine.

Optimizing each of these four factors will incrementally speed up your sales rep onboarding program. Once you have this foundation in place, there’s one more crucial strategy to speed up sales rep onboarding.

The Surprising Way Recruiting Improves Sales Onboarding

Assuming that sales rep onboarding starts on the first day of work misses a major opportunity. In reality, the hiring process has the potential to speed up onboarding in a few ways.

More companies are emphasizing the value of exercises, tests and applied work during the interview process. For instance, you might ask a SDR to develop a plan to pursue a single high potential customer. In other cases, the exercise might ask prospects to draft outreach emails and other sales collateral. Success in these practical exercises is valuable because it indicates that the candidate has the drive to compete despite the uncertainty of the hiring process.

Focused recruiting can also cut down sales rep onboarding time by focusing on passive candidates. When you recruit a sales rep with a strong track record of exceeding their quota, their personal drive and skills will help them to speed through onboarding.

There’s just one problem… The best salespeople are usually focused on serving their customers and making the most of their current role. Relatively few of these sales stars are actively looking for new sales positions. 

The solution? Bring in an outside resource – Peak – that has the expertise to consistently identify, contact and appeal to passive sales candidates. Peak has helped recruit top sales professionals for companies of all sizes including multinationals like John Deere and startups like Fetch.

Click here to contact Peak Sales Recruiting today.

Looking for tips on how to build and onboard a successful B2B sales team? Visit our article on B2B Sales Team Structure to find out more.